Say spouse has other home as primary residence?

[Kelly Conrad]

Alright, bear with me here because this is a bit weird. 

We already own a SFR that we like and aren't looking to sell.

So we have ~30k that we can use, but apparently that's pretty tight when we need a 25% down payment and duplexes around our area in Minnesota around 230-330 range.

Here's my line of thinking, if my husband and I own our house together, could one of us move out and say we're looking to buy this duplex as the spouse's primary residence so we can get better lending and then "house hack" that way? Or could that not even be a possibility since we are both on the title for our current house? So say I'd be the primary resident for our current house, and my husband is the primary resident at the duplex? So we'd have the bare minimum at that location and he'd stay there and fix stuff up while staying there at the minimum time to claim he's a primary residence and then we'd BRRRR.

I'm sure this is incredibly silly, but my Google searching didn't bring up exactly what I was looking for. 

Thanks for reading! :)

[Thomas S.]

If you are married you can not have more than a single primary residence. To make it work you would need to be legally separated or divorced.

I would suggest you go forward with the route of legal separation. Financially it would probably be worth it.